Mind and Heart in Classical Medicine

Dictionaries and lexicons reveal only a consensus concerning the use of a word, the word itself remains elusive, ephemeral, a fleeting brilliance in the vastness of consciousness.

All words are echoes of One Word, and they gleam and glitter within our consciousness, giving form to thought, and voice to feeling.

The creative impulse, embodied in word itself, is called Mantra in Sanskrit. It stems from the root man-. Man- is the clear light of consciousness that illuminates the vast reaches of Mind. The Mind is called man-as. The effect of consciousness and the body’s organ systems on manas, is thought. Thought is form, which emerges from the formless fields of consciousness. Language is mental form, and its physical form is the body. Thought and its words are form-creating energies, which affect the structure and functions of all life processes.

The Greek word for Mind is menos, and is seen in the word phaino-menon– “phenomena”. Phaino is that which appears from out of the silent darkness of Creation, appearing in the luminous reaches of menos, the Mind. Menos, and the object of its thought, phaino, are mirrored in one another, united in the creative impulse which gives them form and provides them with life. Phaino-menon is Creation embracing itself.

The mind is not truly external to the objects that surround it. The Mind shares and penetrates the space of every object and event. There is no true object-ness, nothing alone and separate for itself. There is only subject—the constant presence of Creation manifesting itself as meaning: the unity, the subject, the meaningfulness of all things to one another.

The environment of time and space is not made up of separate, isolated phenomena, but of relatedness, in which all things reflect, create, serve, and become for one another. The shell of form does not create separateness from other forms. It provides Creation with identities, the imperative of relationship, the event of Love.

It is only Man, the living Image of God, the manifestation of the Buddha, the guardian of the Tao, that has language and speech at his command. Therefore Man, the root of Man-as, the Mind, is also the root of Manu, meaning Man, “hu-man being” in Sanskrit. We see this in the Indo-European Germanic languages as Men-sch, and in the Scandinavian as Menn-eske. The Mind, manas, the word by which Man calls himself, echoes the clear Light, the Word of Creation, making Man both co-creator and co-redeemer through the Grace of Life.

Heart

It is the Heart that is the receptacle of the Mind, not the brain. Nerve tissues receive and carry the impulses of biological processes. It is the Mind that generates these impulses. Man thinks, feels, and moves from the center of his being, the heart.

In Hebrew the root glyphs for “heart” are LaMeD BaYT. The word “LeB” is synonymous with “Vital Life Principle,” “thought,” “reasoning,” “will,” and “feelings.” The glyph LaMeD is a projection of the living movement of Creation’s vital energy, flowing with its transforming light through every event, cell and tissue, connecting all evolutionary processes. It is the root of change, growth, and manifestation. The insistent Now of Creation. BaYT is the Eternal Beginning, the time and space, matter and energy contained in all form, the visibility of Self. Together, LaMeD andBaYT show One Heart beating as many; the sacred Many beating as one.

In Sanskrit, the heart organ is expressed as Hridaya. Hridaya is also the Mind. It is the essence, the hidden core of being, and the mediator of Divine Knowledge. The heart beats with the Divine Pulse, its fluids circulating not only life, but the experience of identity, to every cell of the body. The nerve tissue of the brain, organ systems their cells, reflect the heart’s wisdom into the mirror of the body.

The body moves with the rhythm of Life, the graceful dance of the heart. Every breath that we take is the breath of Life. The air we breathe passes first from the lungs to the crucible of the heart where it is transformed into the alchemy of relationship, the eternal and immanent Life of the Divine that nourishes and clothes each cell of the body.

In Chinese, the heart is Hsin, the organ and seat of shen. Shen is the spirit, Creation’s Knowledge of Itself as body. It is the receptacle of Life, Creation manifesting itself as identity. The heart enfolds the shen, its intentional wisdom, which flows through the consciousness of every tissue and organ, fulfilling the laws and motives of Creation. It is the totality, the unity of identity that expresses itself as both thought and tissue. Shen is the mirror of its organ the heart, the wisdom of Creation reflecting itself as Mind.

The Chinese character for Shen is a beautiful icon of calligraphy. The brush stokes reveal the simple form of flesh and identity surrounding a hollow space, the Holy of Holies, the indefinable, the all pervading vessel of the Divine. It is this space, this invisible and sublime fullness, which contains all that can be known, all that can be imagined, is the empty, waiting chamber of the heart, the ark of Creation.

Machines function by way of their parts. Each part separate, made to fit the next. Some parts made up of smaller parts. Bits and pieces of something else, put together to be something else having a particular function. Creation has no particular function. Creation does not make machines. Is not made up of parts. It lives Its fullness in each of Its places, each of Its moments. Unconditionally. There are no parts, only a scintillating web of enfolded phenomena, beating with the pulse of a single Heart, a single desire – To Be. To be all. To be fulfilled. Completely.

This pulse, mirrored in the heart is a giving and a receiving, a rhythm that makes inseparable the cause from its effect.

As in a heart beat, the blood streaming out, emptying itself for the sake of the body, and again receiving of the body’s fullness as it fills once more—as in this beating of the heart there is something Other, invisible, transcendent, yet immanent which envelops and embraces it. This Other is that which the heart rests in—its source, the eternal expression of Life.

All duality of ‘This’ and ‘That’ are resolved in this Other which has no opposites. It is here that the great mystery of life-death is resolved in all creatures in the irresistible impulse to Life that no tongue can speak, and no thought can restrain.

All that exists, exists in and of this Other which contains the All in All. But does not subjugate it. There can be seen no point of separateness, nothing which is ultimately This or That. Life is a longing for itself, for all that it Is. The desire to be One in two, to be Two revealing One. Always One in love, yet distinct these Two. This is the meaning of Sacred.

Life is a sacrament. It gives of itself everything. And in this it receives its abundance.

Everything belongs to it.

Nothing can withstand it. Nothing can be a separate part of anything else. For every thing reflects wholeness, not part-ness.

This wholeness is hidden to the eye, for Creation though manifest, bringing forth from within itself the nobility of identity, is shrouded in the bright darkness of Divine Unity.

Wholeness is conceivable only in its seeming duality: being and relationship. It is relationship, the invisible bond which is Love, a Love that lies in the quick and the core of all being. It is the very breath we breathe, the Breath of the Divine Spirit. The breath of Creation’s history.

The hidden and invisible wholeness of form reflects its lack of true limits, its lack of definitive boundaries, and therefore its lack of independence—its inability to be of and for itself alone.

If we track the ways in which a phenomenon expresses itself, we soon discover that it becomes lost to the eye in the swirling infinity of factors that makes up its history. Its origins are hidden in the Eternal Becoming.

We can only speak of the images forms create as they participate in Life. This is the limit of our science, and its truest response is Reverence.

The very existence of form is the limitless Presence of Creation.

Relationship, relatedness, is the clearest vision of true being

Belonging, not separate. Dependent and necessary.

The eye can see this Presence only in the relatedness of all its manifestations, through their simple way of being.

As we experience the need to breathe, to be nurtured, to receive nutrients, so we see the simple and sacred web of relatedness.

Everything gives of itself, gives from the wealth of its being and becoming. Unlimited, uninhibited, unceasingly: and in this is itself unlimited, uninhibited, and unceasing.

Healthy Solutions

David is the author of the book Healthy Solutions, a guide to Simple Healing and Healthy Wisdom.